The Run of Play is a blog about
the wonder and terror of soccer.

We left the window open during a match in October 2007 and a strange wind blew into the room.

Now we walk the forgotten byways of football with a lonely tread, searching for the beautiful, the bewildering, the haunting, and the absurd.

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The Times Finally Speaks!

Is it significant that they’ve run this on their football blog?

They admit their mistake and apologize, and good for them. They take a light tone toward the hoax, which is appropriate, though it would have been nice to see some awareness of the fact that the hoax was designed to catch out exactly the sort of empty hype that they were spreading in their piece—that this was a commentary on a flawed system, in other words, rather than simple bad luck. And it would have been nice to see it yesterday, before they’d silently tried to cover their mistake.

But better late than never, and there’s no reason to hold a grudge against the Times. (I’d never heard of Masal Bugduv, either.) Just write good stuff, Times. I’m still relieved that I can hang around your soccer blog without fear of being ambushed by Martin Samuel.

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The Times Finally Speaks!

by Brian Phillips · January 16, 2009

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